27 ways to wear brown hair with blonde highlights, from babylights to rebel streaks

The recent wave of “expensive” hair looks have centred around soft, multi-deminsional colour. So it’s no surprise that brown hair with blonde highlights remains one of the easiest (and prettiest) ways to add a little interest and brighten things up – all while maintaining beautiful brunette strands, and offering a stress-free update that’ll grow out seamlessly.

Gone are the days of single-process colour, flat blocked out hair and rogue patches. If you’re looking to intensify your strands, there are endless gorgeous highlighting techniques to choose from, including balayage, babylights and sombré.

The techniques are getting more specific, delicate and tactical, too. These days, highlights have the power to accentuate facial features and brighten complexions – like your own personal sunbeam. You can use colour techniques to create the illusion of light across your strands, whether you want a mini glow-up, a low-maintenance look or you want to amplify pretty texture. Where you concentrate that spotlight is up to you.

Before deciding what direction you want to head in, we’ve answered a couple of Google’s most-asked questions when it comes to brown hair with blonde highlights…

Do blonde highlights look good in brown hair?

Of course, there’s as many different shades of brown as there are of blonde and not all combinations will work for your natural colour, your skin tone or your preferred aesthetic. That’s why it’s important to sit down with your colourist to work out what you want to achieve. It’s helpful to take inspo pictures, especially of people with a similar base or natural hair colour to you, and similar colouring. But, blonde highlights can look good across all different brunettes. In general, if you want a softer look, it’s best to keep things low contrast, so if you have dark brunette hair, opt for a darker shade of blonde highlights, or more of a caramel or bronze. And if you have lighter brunette hair, you can push things brighter. That said, high-contrast moneypiece face-framing sections are still popular and nineties chunky highlights are even making a return.